


Falling, After

by matan4il



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, references to getting hurt on a call
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26991448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/pseuds/matan4il
Summary: Prompt fill from the sensory prompts list for the prompt:The tender ache when you press against bruises.Originally posted onmy Tumblr.Eddie presses his lips to the row of splattered bruises across Buck's back. They've been slowly fading, but still very much there. A dull ache rises and merges with the softness of the kiss."Does it hurt less?" Eddie asks.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 62
Kudos: 203





	Falling, After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nilshki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nilshki/gifts).



> Thank you to the amazing [Toughpaperround](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToughPaperRound/pseuds/ToughPaperRound) for the beta!

Eddie presses his lips to the row of splattered bruises across Buck's back. They've been slowly fading, but still very much there. A dull ache rises and merges with the softness of the kiss.

"Does it hurt less?" Eddie asks. Buck nods, biting down a small groan as mouth and purpled flesh reconnect. The pain has been diminishing and is now far below the threshold of worry. "Good. In a few days," Eddie continues between one fluttering kiss and the next, "they'll be gone. It won't hurt anymore."

Which is the problem. That thought leaves Buck already longing for the bruises and the low pain accompanying them before they're even gone. Trying to explain it is difficult, it sounds too alarming. But when the ache is at exactly this level, it's a confirmation of being alive and a reminder of a crucial moment in time. Buck isn't ready to part with that, not yet.

He fell. Through the night and the smoke, he fell when a rope gave out. None of them saw it coming, so the inflatable mattress wasn't fully in place yet. Luckily, it wasn't from a great height that Buck fell, but while he was, it felt like it was happening forever. An eternity composed from a string of flashes in his mind. His parents and an uneasy childhood marked by a distinct lack of affection. Maddie and her unwavering smile, his only antidote. Her leaving when Buck was still too young for loss and the summer in South America that it prompted. Trying to build himself by going for the Navy SEALs and experiencing a new failure. Figuring out what missing link caused him to fail, picking himself back up and eventually arriving at the 118. Bobby, Hen and Chim, the way that they greeted him. Their smiles over time, their hugs, the unspoken agreement that they all knew their ties were familial. And Eddie, newly arrived. Putting on his shirt in plain view, as if that wasn't breathtaking. Chris, or rather the picture of him on the phone screen that Eddie trusts Buck to see. Father and son in an embrace after the earthquake has struck, a circle of love that they've formed on their own through several difficult years. The same Eddie and Chris, somehow accepting Buck into it. Every moment of joy the three of them had spent together. He hadn't told Eddie yet what that had meant to him, what he had come to realize, and then, Buck was falling.

"What if I don't want it to?" he wonders quietly.

"Why wouldn't you want the pain to pass?" Eddie frowns. And there it is, now there's an explanation that Buck must provide because stupidly, when he feels this much, he can only keep it to himself for so long.

He touches the bruises, the spots where Eddie's lips were but a moment ago. "That was the night you told me that you loved me," Buck says.

Eddie grimaces. "When you hit the ground like that, I was sure we lost you. I'm going to be grateful when that stops replaying in my head."

"I don't think about that. Every time you press against those bruises or kiss them, I can see you hovering above me, first one there. You ran, didn't you?" Buck takes Eddie's refusal to reply as confirmation. "I thought I was going to die, that I would never get to tell you that I love you. But instead, you held me up and told me I wasn't allowed to. Because you love me. And we have a whole beautiful life to live together first."

"And it's been good since, hasn't it?"

"The best. I still can't believe you slept every night in the hospital on that awful plastic chair."

"Just don't forget that the next time you volunteer for another dumb rope rescue. You want pain? That was real levels of it."

Buck grimaces. "It's not the pain I want. I'm scared I'm going to grow complacent. That I'll get used to this and I'll stop appreciating how lucky I am. Isn't that what goes wrong in lots of friendships and relationships, people start taking being loved for granted? And all because they forget that there was a moment when things changed. When love was added in to the mixture. A moment that might not have happened. I don't want to forget or to have the bruises gone, not yet. This thing, us. It's still so new. When you press in and I feel that ache, it reminds me and I'm not ready for that to disappear."

Eddie replies resolutely after a brief instant of considering all this. "You don't need the pain."

"But..."

"No," he cuts Buck off, tone stern, but touch gentle. "Because I'm going to love you even more tomorrow than I do today. And more than that the day after. I'm going to love you so much more each day, Evan Buckley, that it won't be just one moment and you'll never struggle to remember."


End file.
